Jig and Jog

I love crafty blogs,  in fact, I subscribe to quite a few on my Google Reader feed. In full disclosure, I began subscribing to them when I ran an after school care program and day camps and needed cheap, fun craft projects for the kids. Crafts were my last refuge in an attempt to not kill the critters.  But, I digress,  I like to look at the pretty things other people and their children make.  I also really like Etsy.com I have started using Etsy as my go-to website for creative, original gifts.  Sadly, however, I am not really very crafty.  I wish I was crafty, I have tried on numerous occasions to be crafty, but I must lack some kind of crafty gene because I fail at being crafty.

In elementary school, I remember the exciting days were when my mom would take me to the craft store, and I would spend the entire trip attempting to convince her I needed another wooden craft box and acrylic paint so that I could create something.  Invariably, my mother would roll her eyes, pick out the yarn she was looking for, and ignore my pleas.  Occasionally, I wore her down though, and I eventually made several really unattractive bird houses, little wooden boxes and unfinished hook rug things, T-shirts terribly decorated with various colors and textures of puffy paint. The list goes on. I could never quite decide on one design scheme for any of my projects, or even when something started to look really great, somewhere along the line it would take a turn for the heinous, and would end up looking like a mish-mash of ugly.   One truly depressing memory is from my best friend’s 15th birthday party which was a “scrap-booking” theme. We were all asked to bring photos that we could use to create a “fun, memory filled scrapbook page!”  This party was torture, and I spent most of the time wanting to use the various crazy shaped scissors to slice my wrists open.  In all fairness, I was also at least 2 years older than all of the other party goers, and when you are 17, you don’t really want to be making scrapbook pages with sophomores.

So, my point is, all these crafty blogs I read are making me feel inferior.  If toddlers can make attractive crafts, why can’t I? I mean, seriously! Look at the shit these kids and their moms (and sometimes dads) make! It’s freakin adorable (some of it)!  I wish I could blame this lack of craft gene on my mother, but even with Rheumatoid Arthritis she knits and crochets.  I think my mom really hit the nail on the head one of the many, fruitless times she attempted to teach me how to knit and/or crochet, “Catherine, you need to have patience.”   I wish crafts would hurry up and just get easier and less work intensive already!

Progress?